Far behind, opposition presidential candidate links himself to popular Brazilian president

[Judi Lynn]

Far behind, opposition presidential candidate links himself to popular Brazilian president
BRADLEY BROOKS
Associated Press Writer
2:15 p.m. EDT, August 20, 2010

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's opposition presidential candidate is plummeting so fast in the polls that he's running television ads linking himself to the nation's popular president — who backs his rival.

TV spots show Jose Serra with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as a voice that sounds much like the president's intones, "Serra and Lula, two men of history. Two experienced leaders."

Only problem: Silva wants to make history with his own candidate, Dilma Rousseff, his former chief of staff.

Leaders of Silva's Workers Party said Friday they would file a complaint before the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court, which enforces election laws.

"I think it's odd for a candidate to try, in a way that is often pathetic, to link his name to President Lula," Rousseff told a meeting of Brazilian journalists in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday. "He's opposed Lula's government during his entire time in office."

More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-brazil-elections,0,435128.story

[Peace Patriot]

1. "Unorthodox" is hardly the word for this Serra campaign tactic. "Fraud" describes it better.

"Polls show that Serra has good reason for unorthodox campaign moves."--from the OP

------------------------

Well, maybe we'll soon find out what inroads Diebold/ES&S has made into the Brazilian election system, if Rousseff's big lead 'evaporates' on election day. I read a while back that they were in Brazil peddling their election theft machines. Don't know how widespread it is. Can't think that Latin American voters and leftist political parties and leaders would be such fools as people are here, in the US, to let a PRIVATE corporation 'count' the votes using 'TRADE SECRET' software with virtually no audit/recount controls--not only that but a corporation with far rightwing connections (ES&S) which now (after buying out Diebold, has an 80% monopoly in the US voting machine 'market'!

We've had two odd election outcomes, now, in Latin America--in Chile and in Colombia. I don't think the problem in Colombia is electronic voting. The problem is the righwing death squads and the Colombian military--state terror against trade unionists, community organizers, peasant farmers and others (massive displacement of peasant farmers). Chile, though, may have been infested with these highly riggable, non-transparent voting systems. I need to find out a lot more about this and I'm not sure how to do it. I was able to find out a lot about Venezuela's voting system--which is electronic but totally transparent--"OPEN SOURCE" code that belongs to the public and that anyone may review, and they do a whopping 55% handcount to check for machine error or fraud--more than five times the percentage necessary to detect fraud in an electronic system. But I don't know where to begin to investigate Chile's system and Brazil's. I will try to internet.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Totally electronic, private code, no paper trail. My God, Brazil is wide open to election fraud!

It wasn't hard to find the information on the internet. Here it is, and it is bad, bad, BAD news, and, yes, Diebold is involved...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil

It makes no difference whatsoever that Lula da Silva was elected with this system. The U.S. may have thought they could buy Lulu. They could not. And he has done any number of things in defiance of U.S. dictates--including fully backing President Chavez in Venezuela, fully backing President Zelaya in Honduras, fully backing UNASUR (South American formation of a common market excluding the U.S.), and inviting Iran's president to Brazil and trying to broker a peace deal with regard to Iranian nuclear power development. If the U.S. doesn't want Rousseff to follow in Lulu's footsteps--and she is more leftist than Lulu, as I understand it--they have Diebold's and Microsoft's fingers in the election machinery!

Prepare yourself. We could well find Rousseff's lead reversed on election day. Would they risk it, given that everyone expects her to win? It might be important enough to our war profiteers and multinationals that they would risk a fracas over election fraud. But if the fracas goes like the ones here, with the corpo-fascist media colluding on election fraud, they may get away with it. Sounds like Brazil's Supreme Court is for shits--much like ours. They PERMITTED 'TRADE SECRET' code voting, and have forbidden the public to review the code. Brazil has some rules that we don't--for instance, the political party leaders can review the code, if I understand this Wiki article correctly. But 'TRADE SECRET' codes can be changed--quickly, invisibly, without detection. That is the problem, here and there.

Hold onto your hats! We might be in for a rightwing coup in Brazil.

[gbscar]

3. I see you're leaving no room for such structural problems as, say, corruption and clientelism

...which have been widespread throughout Latin America's history and are harder to resolve than either potentially rigged electronic voting machines or the intimidation of a varying percentage of voters and political actors by any of several distinct armed factions.

Leaving aside other additional factors or further debate about the above for the time being, I would say that those two well-known aspects cannot possibly be ignored regardless of the outcome in the upcoming Brazil elections. For the record, however, I'm actually hoping that Serra doesn't win but I don't know much about the current Brazilian context in order to judge whether or not the polls are a good enough indication of his probable loss...at least not to the point that the only remaining wild card would be the voting machines you've spoken of.

[Peace Patriot]

4. No, I don't discount other forms of election fraud and coups. But e-voting makes it EASY.

You don't have to fire a shot. You don't have to stuff ballot boxes, bribe/bully numerous people to do it, or get rid of the evidence (tossed/changed ballots). You don't have to create elaborate cabals or plots. All you need is one programmer. He/she could be in Hong Kong or Dubai. And of course corpo-fascist media to endorse the results and ignore evidence like pre-election polls and exit polls, and to treat those who point out discrepancies like nutballs.

Easy as pie.

Consider this sequence:

U.S. leaders, having already pulled off a coup d'etat via Florida '00/the Supreme Court, decide to inflict an extremely unjust war on another country, to steal its oil.

In an atmosphere of fear-mongering, re 9/11, they extract a sort of OK from the Anthrax Congress--many of whose members are warmongers or tied to war profiteering anyway.

In the same month--THE SAME MONTH!--Oct '02--they ALSO get the Anthrax Congress to pass a bill creating a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle, to fast-track electronic voting systems all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing/Republican-connected corporations, one of whose CEOs (Diebold) is a Bush/Cheney "Pioneer"--major fundraiser--and who even writes a letter promising to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004."

Nearly 60% of the American people oppose this war. (Feb '03, all polls.) The Bushwhacks, war profiteers, 'Blue Dog' Democrats and others who drag us into this extremely unjust, extremely costly war knew this, some months before, in Oct '02--that the American people would oppose it.

How do you make it look like they endorse it? How do you keep this horrible war going? How do war profiteers keep looting the public coffers? How do you keep making the rich richer while looting the public coffers for unjust war? How do you throw out the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and the Uniform Code of Military Justice by torturing prisoners--not just "terrorists" but randomly arrested prisoners in Iraq, for the purpose of terrorizing the population, and randomly arrested people in another country, Afghanistan, who are whisked away on "black flights" to your torture dungeon in Cuba, also to terrorize the population? How do you do this to America where 64% of the people oppose torture "under any circumstances" even after 9/11 (NYT poll, May '04), and nearly 60% oppose unjust war?

You rig the 2004 election.

The 2004 election was rigged by several means. The war profiteers took no chances, since the e-voting coup was not yet complete. But clearly the e-voting coup was responsible for Bush/Cheney 'wins' in key states, where the discrepancy between the e-voting results and the exit polls was most pronounced. And e-voting, of course, DOES NOT LEAVE AN EVIDENCE TRAIL. So no one can prove it, though the inferential evidence is very strong. End. Of. Story. No one can prove it.

Of course elections in the U.S. are complex. For instance, you have to have a million dollars in hand even to think of running for Congress. That eliminates thousands of potential good leaders from ever running for office in the first place. So you have it pretty much guaranteed that, whoever ultimately wins the office, they will be a member of the super-rich class or a servant of the super-rich class. Add in corpo-fascist media 'Swift-boating' and other such dirty ops and you can further eliminate potential leaders who might serve the people. THEN add e-voting, now 80% controlled by ONE, far rightwing corporation (ES&S, which just bought out Diebold), and you can do anything you want--you can even let a "liberal" get elected president and control him with a "Blue Dog" Congress. You have the flexibility to throw suspicion off the OBVIOUSLY RIGGABLE vote counting system--to kill the election reform movement--meanwhile planning your next move: how to yank the "liberal" and install Bush Junta II.

So, no, I am by no means ignoring the many ways that fascists gain power--here or in Latin America. I know, for instance, that the USAID is pouring multimillions of our tax dollars into rightwing political groups all over Latin America. This is added to the private money pouring into rightwing coffers from multinational corporations, local big business and the super-rich, to defeat the left. And it is added to COVERT U.S. money and COVERT U.S. ops to defeat the left. And it is added to the corpo-fascist media, here and there, and their role in trying to defeat the left. And it is added to U.S. military aid to create networks of military fascists for coup purposes--and, in places like Colombia, for murdering leftists.

I am well aware of all this. But I am simply pointing out the extreme danger of e-voting ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, which makes rigging elections EASY--simple, undetectable, unprovable, limited to a very few operatives.

That is the situation in Brazil, as here. (Venezuela uses e-voting, but it is very, very transparent. It is, for one thing, OPEN SOURCE code, and, for another, they do a whopping 55% handcount to check for fraud--more than five times the percentage needed.)

Brazil is vulnerable IN THIS NEW WAY to the same kind of crap we've seen here--U.S. corporate/war profiteer tools hijacking the country INVISIBLY.